Usenix ATC Announcement • Hacker News Board

Re: Usenix ATC Announcement

#11

Post by jamesblonde » Fri, May 09, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

nycerrrrrrrrrr wrote: post #8

jamesblonde wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the answer as to why it didn't. A place on the PC or steering committee became so important for tenure/promotion in the US, that it was 90%+ US people - a social group factor. That led to no attempt to widen the circle of general interest. If they had come to Europe 20 years ago, it would have been huge and breathed new life into Usenix ATC.

Not sure what you mean by "US people" - the PC is mostly (but definitely not 90%) US based, but that follows from systems research being largely US based (for now, at least).

90% of systems researchers are not US-based. My point is that it didn't embrace global leadership in systems research as a conference. It died because it didn't grow. Eurosys was created as a counter-weight to Europeans not being able to get on the PC of conferences like Usenix ATC. It's still going strong.

Re: Usenix ATC Announcement

#12

Post by mjb » Fri, May 09, 2025, 3:43 PM UTC

This makes sense, especially with the move of OSDI to being annual, and NSDI accepting more and more general systems-y work (e.g. we published the Firecracker paper at NSDI, which wouldn't have made sense even 5 years earlier). ATC was left in a difficult niche, but still a valuable venue for "hackier" systems work, industry systems papers of the less quantitative kind, and a few others.

I'd love to see OSDI evolve to accept more of this work, and look at the ATC work that has stood the test of time and accept more work like that. Maybe SOSP and Eurosys too. I bet USENIX is going to figure this out - they're generally a smart and well-run organization.

Fun fact: we won best industry paper at ATC'23 for "On-demand container loading in AWS Lambda" (https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc23/presentation/brooker). I was super happy with it as a paper and got a ton of good feedback on it. About six months earlier, it'd been desk-rejected by the chair of another systems conference who asked that we don't submit such low-quality work to them.

Re: Usenix ATC Announcement

#13

Post by musicale » Tue, May 13, 2025, 2:15 AM UTC

jamesblonde wrote: post #6

Great conference throughout the years. I think there was a failure of imagination, though. When numbers dwindled, why not do what other top tier systems conferences do - move outside the US and Bay Area!?!?

ATC had more submissions than Eurosys, and a lower acceptance rate.

Re: Usenix ATC Announcement

#14

Post by Ar-Curunir » Wed, May 14, 2025, 12:07 AM UTC

jamesblonde wrote: post #7

jamesblonde wrote: post #6

Great conference throughout the years. I think there was a failure of imagination, though. When numbers dwindled, why not do what other top tier systems conferences do - move outside the US and Bay Area!?!?

I know the answer as to why it didn't. A place on the PC or steering committee became so important for tenure/promotion in the US, that it was 90%+ US people - a social group factor. That led to no attempt to widen the circle of general interest. If they had come to Europe 20 years ago, it would have been huge and breathed new life into Usenix ATC.

PC membership is not necessary for tenure/promotion. Eg my advisor has only been on ~5 PCs in a ten-year career, and has gained tenure at two top-10 CS schools. In general it’s more of a checkmark.